


The Edge In Your Affection

by sinuous_curve



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU
Genre: Age Difference, Blow Jobs, D/s, Daddy Kink, Established Relationship, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Mentor/Sidekick, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:56:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The thing about Bruce is that Tim can never, ever see the moment where his internal flip happens. The logical extension of that is that there is no conscious shift for him, that this is as integral a part of who he is as becoming the Bat. That, too, falls under the heading of things Tim wonders about, but has no particular need to ever talk about. The thought only ever comes moments before he’s suddenly preoccupied. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Edge In Your Affection

**Author's Note:**

> Written at the behest of the ever lovely locketofyourhair. The working title was for this was, 'Tim's not a sub, he just plays one on the weekends,' and that very nearly became the actual title. 
> 
> Further feedback and much appreciated encouraging noises provided by riversburn and libby. You are both gentlemen and scholars.

The sun’s just starting to set as Tim heads down the road toward the manor. Halloween’s two weeks away, and the late afternoon air is sharp and almost cold against the odd patches of exposed skin that show in the gaps of his gloves and between the collar of his jacket and his helmet. The leaves scattered over the blacktop swirl in his wake, and the whole scene is particularly artful with the house looming through the trees. 

Dick suggests every year that they turn one wing into a haunted house for the kids that benefit from the Wayne Foundation. Bruce counters every year that children are notoriously bad at staying out of off-limits places, and that they also have an uncanny ability to notice certain secret things that they would all prefer remain hidden. Tim’s pretty sure that’s at least fifty percent Bruce-speak for hoards of small children make him wildly uncomfortable. But he’s also funded a carnival for those kids for the last five years, so Tim’s willing to give him a pass. 

He draws up into a stop at the iron gate, and flips up his visor. The front panel of what looks like a creaky callbox retracts smoothly. Tim holds his eye up to the retinal scanner and presses his palm to the handprint reader. More and more Tim sort of wonders at the efficacy of their first line of security now that they can legitimately talk about multiple instances of dealing with clones (not to mention the resurrected and dimensionally displaced). Still, he smiles when Alfred’s slightly tinny, metallic voice says, “Welcome home, Master Drake.” 

The gate slowly draws back, and Tim flips his visor back down and revs his bike’s engine. The leaves are thicker on the long driveway up to the front of the house and he takes it at an easy pace. It’s funny, how simple intention can make his insides draw up tight in anticipation. It really doesn’t matter that he’s made this drive ten thousand times, or that he currently makes it easily three times a week. 

Those times aren’t this time. Tim quirks a smile as he comes to a stop at the front entrance, shoves down the kickstand, and swings off. It’s not supposed to rain all weekend, and he knows it’s impatient? But he doesn’t want to take the time to park it in either the upstairs garage with Bruce’s rarely driven collection of cars or in the underground garage where the Batmobile always seems to be quietly mocking all the other rides. 

He keeps his front door key on a chain around his neck, playing at being the latchkey kid he never was. The lock is more Alfred’s affectation than anything else, but Tim can appreciate it. There’s something about having a house key that trumps knowing his DNA will trigger unlocking mechanisms.

“Alfie?” Tim calls once he’s in the foyer. He hikes his duffle up on his shoulder and heads toward the kitchen. “Bruce? Anyone?” 

It’s just late enough that the lengthening shadows start to turn the manor into something more impressively gothic. When Tim first moved in, he spent a solid four months really not being particularly fond of leaving his room once dark had fallen. He’s the logical one, or so everyone who knows the Robins makes a point of saying, but he was a kid and the house is old. And, realistically, a little creepy. 

Tim drops his duffle, helmet, and gloves at the foot of the stairs. He just barely hears someone bustling around the kitchen, and smart money says it’s not Bruce. 

Alfred’s standing at the large island in the kitchen’s center, wool coat buttoned neatly up to his chin. His plaid scarf, cap, and leather gloves are piled neatly at his elbow, and there’s a small overnight bag on the floor at his feet. Tim grins, and pushes his way in. The kitchen is always warmer than the rest of the house, and smells like baking bread and good food. It’s the place Tim most strongly associates with the manor itself as home. Alfred looks up from the pad he’s writing on and smiles. “Hello, Master Tim.” 

“Hey, Alfie,” Tim says, leaning against the island. Alfred turns back to his pad and they lapse into comfortable silence. 

Tim has never asked -- and will never ask -- what Alfred thinks about this thing. It has to be weird, Tim thinks, at the very least in the way watching someone you held as a baby grow up. Tim’s conscious of his age, too, and the ways in which the gap between him and Bruce doesn’t matter at all when it comes right down to it. And yet. 

“Where are you going?” Tim asks. 

Alfred finishes whatever he’s writing with a final dotting of an i, and caps his pen. “Master Dick and Miss Barbara have asked for my assistance on a case in Bludhaven.”

Tim cocks his head. “Did they?”

“Indeed.” Alfred puts on his hat and gloves and smiles wryly. “I believe Miss Barbara said something about requiring an ops assistant, but I believe that was her and Master Dick’s code for being another restraining voice to tell Master Damian he is not, in fact, allowed to arbitrarily break bones.” 

“I see,” Tim laughs, skimming fingers through his hair. The question of whether or not Damian has put two and two together is another one entirely, and one that Tim really does not care what the answer is. Damian is proof that Tim never particularly needed that younger siblings are an overrated commodity.

Alfred picks up his overnight bag and pushes the pad toward Tim. “Important phone numbers, and security codes,” Alfred explains. “In case of emergency.” 

Tim taps his thumb against them. “You _are_ aware Bruce isn’t actually a kid,” he says. 

“I am,” Alfred snorts. “He also has a propensity for needless danger, injuring himself, and not leaving enough room in his world view for the small details. Have a pleasant weekend, Master Tim. Master Bruce is downstairs. I imagine he is expecting you.”

“Bye, Alfred.” Tim rips the paper off the pad and folds it into his jacket pocket. 

The manor is deeply, comfortably silent after the sounds of Alfred closing the upper garage door fade away. A couple minutes later, Tim faintly hears the roar of an engine and it too fades away after a moment. Tim closes his eyes and takes a deep, steadying breath. He focuses on slowing and steadying his heart and making the nervous, anticipatory tightness in his chest ease up. 

“Okay,” he says quietly to the empty kitchen, then pushes off the island and heads toward the secret recessed panel in the hall. 

The cave is, as always, a good twenty degrees colder than the house and faintly damp in a way that no amount of environmental controls will ever be able to overcome. The lights set into the walls of the passage down from the manor hum softly as Tim walks, casting a blue tinged glow that Tim knows logically is harshly fluorescent, and likes anyways. After two minute’s walk he can hear the more powerful, throbbing hum of the batcomputer’s server banks and a minute after that the faint clatter of typing. 

Bruce is, unsurprisingly, sitting at the console with a report open on the main screen. Tim skims it as he crosses the cave -- something about Maroni and organized crimes, and pushing some new drug with enough potency that Tim thinks, and says, “Ivy, maybe?” before he can stop himself. 

“Most likely,” Bruce agrees, somewhat reluctantly saving his work and closing the report. 

Bruce looks the same as he always does, black shirt and slacks, with his hair just rumpled enough for Tim to decide that he’s probably been working for awhile, and pushing his fingers through it whenever he stopped to think. Enough time has passed since he came back and the world righted itself that Tim probably shouldn’t feel the urge to reach out and touch him and make sure he’s real, and yet. 

Dick once said, during his stint in the cowl, that the hardest part of losing Bruce was dealing with the abrupt, seemingly irrevocable end of the world’s only constant. Which Tim gets, though he knows he comes at it sideways. He knew Bruce was misplaced, but waking up in the morning with that empty hole in the world where he should have been was still the hardest thing Tim has ever done. 

He leans against the console, close enough for his leg to brush against Bruce’s knee. It’s subtle enough that Bruce just glances at the contact rather than feeling compelled to say anything. (One unexpected side effect of Damian has been Bruce’s sudden tendency to try and, awkwardly, point out the things that he sees. Tim has Dick, though, and Kon and Steph and the last thing he wants from Bruce is a heart to heart about that Time He Sort of Died.) 

“Alfred’s headed out,” Tim says. “We’re alone.” 

Bruce nods and folds his arms over his chest. 

The thing about Bruce is that Tim can never, ever see the moment where his internal flip happens. The logical extension of that is that there is no conscious shift for him, that this is as integral a part of who he is as becoming the Bat. That, too, falls under the heading of things Tim wonders about, but has no particular need to ever talk about. The thought only ever comes moments before he’s suddenly preoccupied. 

“Get on your knees,” Bruce says, almost mildly. 

Tim, on the other hand, does have a couple very close to the surface switches. 

His body reacts without the need for conscious thought, his knees giving way and hitting the rough concrete floor with almost enough force to make him wince. There’s always a split second where he thinks that in a perfect world he would be as innately graceful as Dick -- but in a perfect world he would also be as tall as Dick, and anyway. Dick isn’t the one who gets to look at Bruce from this vantage point, so maybe Tim has to be okay with the way things have fallen out, all of it considered. 

Warmth blossoms up in the pit of his belly and flushes out over his skin. Bruce is larger than life stretched above him like that, no matter how much the cliche doesn’t manage to really get at how it feels. Bruce is big in a purely physical way, but his presence is more than that. The way he _looks_ at Tim is considering and careful, and a little distant right at the beginning. 

Tim flicks out his tongue and wets his lips. That’s a slightly more Pavlovian response, and he’s only slightly embarrassed by it. He’s too hot beneath the heavy leather of his jacket, but there’s a simple inability to take it off curled around the back part of his brain that is perfectly fucking happy to be allowed to insist on being told what to do. To refuse to function without order or permission. 

Dick thinks Tim lacks self-confidence. Tim has never once mouthed off that that’s both partially true and a funny way to describe this -- acquiescence. 

Bruce unfolds his arms, puts one on his knee and with the other pushes Tim’s hair away from his face. Tim has always loved the strength of Bruce’s hands, and the blunt, practical capability inherent in their ridiculous size. Bruce spreads his knees in a gesture that, coming from him, manages to avoid looking sleazy or funny, and Tim shifts forward. He wants. 

“Go on,” Bruce says, and tightens his hand in Tim’s hair. 

Briefly, Tim presses his forehead to Bruce’s knee and inhales his scent. He always smells a little like the suit, that odd combination of well oiled leather and rubber and something faintly like machinery. Bruce’s hand stays easy for a moment, allowing the indulgence. It’s been nearly a month since the last time, and that’s longer than either of them like. When Bruce’s fingers go tight again, Tim has steadied himself. 

He pushes one fist into his belly, right above his cock where the heat slowly pulsing along his nerves coalesces. With the other, he undoes the button on Bruce’s fly and eases down the zipper. Bruce sighs so softly Tim feels it in the spasm of Bruce’s fingers more than he hears it. He’s wearing black boxers and Tim palms against his half-hard cock through the thin, soft cotton. 

This is more ritual for Bruce than for Tim, because Bruce’s conscience is a thing with claws. Tim shifts forward again to settle between Bruce’s thighs, and so he can drag his mouth along Bruce’s cock. He exhales slowly until the cotton is warm from his breath and the hand on Bruce’s knee curls into a fist Tim can just make out from the corner of his eye. He wants that hand wrapped around his throat or his cock or digging bruises into his skin. 

“Tim,” Bruce says. 

He’s hard now, so Tim pushes his hand through the gap and pulls his cock out. It’s thick and hot against his palm, and flushed dark. Tim sighs in the back of his throat in a more bone deep kind of anticipation, and it settles him down. If Tim can get to this point, he can get them the rest of the way. He licks a wide, messy stripe along the vein on the underside; his mouth floods with the taste of sweat and salt and Bruce’s skin and Bruce makes the most fractional of noises. His hand shakes hard enough that Tim can feel it against his skull. 

There’s a hum beneath Tim’s skin that ratchets up as he sucks the head of Bruce’s cock into his mouth. It wants to push this into something greedy and frantic, and Tim _wants_ , he really does. He circles a hand around the base of Bruce’s cock and makes himself remember that they have nearly two days and it doesn’t have to be fast. This isn’t a Gotham rooftop and afterward Bruce isn’t going to blast radio silence for two days of self-imposed punishment that Tim has to suffer through, too. 

Bruce’s cock is a heavy weight on Tim’s tongue, thick and wide. Tim is thorough, and he lets himself be just a little bit sloppy. He picks up steady rhythm, his head bobbing with Bruce’s hand providing just enough pressure for Tim to feel held and not trapped. The cotton around Bruce’s cock gets spit damp and clingy quickly, and Tim likes how it feels and how it smells. 

It’s quiet enough in the cave that all Tim can hear is the slick sound of his hand and mouth, the little hitched gasps he accidentally makes when he sucks Bruce in as deep as he can. Beneath that, just barely audible, are Bruce’s own sharply inhaled breaths, and the odd little half sigh noises that shimmy along Tim’s nerves and wrap around his own cock. He’s hard enough that the zipper of his pants across his crotch hurts, but it’s so distant Tim barely notices. 

Eventually, the corners of his mouth start feeling rubbed raw and Tim’s focus spirals down into that sharply heightened place where the rest of the world drops away. He tongues at the slit of Bruce’s cock and swallows him down again, humming low in the back of his throat. He wants Bruce to fuck his face, to hold his head in place so Tim can’t move or protest or help, he just has to hold his mouth open and let himself be a fucking tool. 

Bruce’s fingers suddenly go painfully tight and he jerks Tim’s head back. 

Tim whines, mouth open and wet. He’s not _done_. Bruce uncurls his clenched hand with no small amount of effort and swipes his thumb over Tim’s swollen bottom lip. The skin is just faintly callused and it drags and Tim full-body shudders. 

Bruce pushes his thumb into Tim’s mouth and Tim sucks, eyes fluttering closed for just a moment. 

“Tim,” Bruce growls. Tim snaps his eyes open and looks at him. The sound he hears, the low and steady whine, barely registers as something Tim is doing. He sucks on Bruce’s thumb, and wants. Bruce swallows. “Finish.” 

He shoves Tim back down and _this_ , this is what Tim wants. Bruce holds him down and his hips come up, and Tim sucks as hard as he can. He’s gagging a little, breathless and choked, and he has to dig his fist into his belly to keep from coming in his pants like a fourteen year old who just saw their hot neighbor changing through the window. Bruce doesn’t do anything by halves, and that includes fucking Tim’s face. There’s a calculation and precision to the timing of his hips and the weight of his hand

But he told Tim to finish and Tim is good, and he can do that. He works his hand as best he can to match Bruce’s pace and lets his mouth go slack and easy, gasping in air when he can and rolling his eyes up to look at Bruce. His eyes are stupidly bright, intent and surprised and nakedly full of want. 

Bruce is older, and he doesn’t have the same hair trigger that still sometimes catches Tim off guard. Tim likes that, he likes Bruce’s cock against the back of his throat, his mouth sore and raw and wet and his nerves throbbing so hard it hurts. Bruce’s mouth opens just a little right before he comes. The flat, controlled line unravels and he looks like he’s in pain. 

Tim sucks so hard and works his hand and thinks _please, please, please_. 

With a soft, groaned noise, Bruce comes down Tim’s throat.

*

Tim loses a little bit of time in a way that’s vastly different, and much preferable, to what happens when he gets cracked over the head.

He opens his eyes when Bruce says, “Tim,” in that tone that exists between his normal speaking voice and the Batman’s threatening growl. It’s all the command without the fear and Tim lifts his face from where he’s got it pressed to the crease of Bruce’s thigh. His mouth feels swollen, sore and rubbed raw at the edges. He’s smiling, and really doesn’t think he’s capable of making himself stop. 

Bruce releases Tim’s hair, but keeps his big palm cradling the back of Tim’s head. His face isn’t really expressive, but there’s some ease of tension there that makes Tim exhale in long and quiet relief. He gets why this is harder for Bruce than it is for him. He does, and yet. 

“Hi,” Tim says, after the silence of Bruce just looking at him stretches far enough. His breath is still coming a little shallow. He sounds like he just finished a workout. 

Bruce crooks the corner of his mouth into a small grin. “Hello,” he says. He reaches out and wipes his thumb over the corner of Tim’s mouth. It comes away a little sticky, and Tim almost says, _oh, come, right_ instead of just thinking it. He want, easily and without hurry, for Bruce to push his thumb back into his mouth, and let Tim suck it clean. 

“Come here,” Bruce says, and tugs. 

For a second, Tim’s fairly certain that he hasn’t recovered enough coordination to get his feet under him. But Bruce catches him with a hand around his bicep, and then it’s less Tim standing than allowing himself to be manhandled. There’s something still illogical about Bruce’s strength, and his size, despite the years Tim has spent watching him move through the world. Tim’s still smiling, and he doesn’t care. 

Bruce settles Tim straddling his lap, knees caught between Bruce’s hips and the sides of the chair. Tim loops his arms around Bruce’s neck and, after a slight hesitation, Bruce laces his fingers at the small of Tim’s back. He’s getting better, in controlled inches, about physical contact that doesn’t serve some immediate purpose. Tim still can’t fathom how Dick survived with someone as touch-shy as Bruce, but he also thinks that Dick’s incessant, unthinking handsiness is at least a third of why Bruce only hesitates a little. 

Then Bruce pulls him a little closer, and Tim’s fly pushes against his cock and he’s not thinking about Dick. 

Bruce cocks his head at the low, grunted noise Tim makes. “I thought so,” he says. “Go ahead.”

Bruce giving him permission always more or less sounds like an order, and Tim reacts without thought. He’s distantly aware that he might be missing a logical step in there (unzipping his pants, getting a hand on his cock, that kind of thing) but it’s just as good to curl his fingers into the fabric stretched across Bruce’s shoulders and grind down with his bottom lip between his teeth. 

The slow drag of friction against his cock is teasingly distant through his pants and boxers. Bruce’s hands slide down to grab his ass and, yes, that’s good. Tim likes that. He drops his forehead onto Bruce’s shoulder, and when Bruce pushes him closer and triggers another frustratingly distant roll of sensation, Tim turns his head and presses his face to the crook of Bruce’s neck. The noises Tim makes, low and drawn out, turn to muffled vibration against Bruce’s skin. 

Tim lets his body do what it wants, grinding down against Bruce with just a little desperation. Bruce’s fly is still unzipped, so Tim can feel the twitches of interest in his cock, despite the reality that there’s no way Bruce can get hard again that fast. Tim whines. He digs his fingers into the solid muscles of Bruce’s shoulders and back. He wants Bruce to wrap his hand around both their cocks together, so Tim can get the callused friction of his palm.

This isn’t _enough_. It’s a _tease_.

“It’s not --” Tim grits out. “I can’t--”

Bruce shifting cuts off Tim’s words and turns them into a needy, gasped little sound. He pushes one his hands down between Tim’s thighs and pulses his palm against Tim’s cock. The solid, steady pressure makes Tim’s shoulders spasm and his toes curl up inside his boots. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he chants, lifting up from Bruce’s shoulder and throwing his head back. 

Then it’s Bruce who pushes forward, pressing his mouth against Tim’s neck right above the collar of his shirt. Tim’s hips pick up speed and lose rhythm -- devolving into a frantic, relentless roll as his balls draw up so hard it almost hurts. His body contracts in on itself when he comes. Tim snaps his head back down and his hips lift up into almost unbearable resistance from Bruce’s hand. A damp, dark spot spreads out on his pants and Tim huffs out a babbled noise. 

Then he goes boneless against Bruce’s chest. He’s breathless, again. Warmth spreads out in an oddly tangible sensation along his limbs. He feels like his brain has devolved into something that’s only capable of humming. 

Bruce extracts his hand and carefully strokes down Tim’s spine. “Good,” he says, then swallows and clears his throat a little. “Good boy.”

*

Eventually, it’s the strain on his knees and the uncomfortable stickiness in his pants that brings Tim up out of his warm, post-coital haze. He rolls his shoulders and blinks at Bruce, whose hands are still spread on the small of his back. Bruce’s expression is controlled, but easier around the edges than usual.

“Mm.” Tim pushes his fingers up Bruce’s neck and into his hair. “That was nice.”

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Thank you.”

It’s so totally a Bruce reaction that Tim has to smile a little. He doesn’t have to lean in and kiss him, lightly and almost chastely, but he does anyway. Bruce instinctively resists for a split second, like he’s not certain of how he’s meant to react, but Tim is used to that ingrained response. 

Tim makes a soft noise of displeasure when Bruce pulls back. “Go shower,” he says. “Then come upstairs.” 

There’s intention in the way he says it that Tim doesn’t think anyone else would be able to read. Except Dick, maybe, but Tim doubts Dick would know what to do with that particular tone. Tim’s stomach dips, but it’s not unpleasant so much as anticipatory. It’s been more than a month and they have all night. Barring crisis, of course, which is never anything close to a guarantee in Gotham. Still, sometimes even the bats get lucky.

Tim says, “Yes,” and leaves it that, though there are at least a handful of epithets in the back of his mouth that crowd against his teeth. It’s not for embarrassment that he keeps them back, but timing. Tim isn’t as fast or flexible as Dick, or as strong as Jason was, or a single-minded sociopath like Damian. He compensates as best he can by knowing the right moment. 

He crawls off Bruce’s lap and his knees only sway a little when he stands. Bruce’s hand lights, steadying, on his hip for a split second.

_All night_ , Tim reminds himself. _Don’t be embarrassing_. “Thanks,” he says, looking over his shoulder. 

Bruce inclines his head. “You’re welcome.” 

In the cave bathroom -- though, as Dick points out, it’s really a locker room minus the quotes with inspirational posters from the eighties -- Tim turns on one of the shower heads as hot as it will go and shucks off his clothes. His leather jacket, a little dusty from the road, goes onto the counter by the sink and the rest of it into the hamper. He shakes his head a little at himself as he strips off his underwear.

He looks at his reflection before steam closes up the mirror. His mouth is as raw as it feels, swollen and well-fucked. Tim touches his bottom lip and the sense memory of Bruce shoving into him is momentarily overwhelming. He wants it again. 

Once he’s in the shower Tim stands with the spray pounding over his shoulders and drops his head. The water is hot enough to almost be scalding, but it feels good. The low thunder of the spray against the tile walls and floor drowns out the other ambient noise that’s pervasive in the cave; servers humming, computer clicking and beeping as it runs the half-dozen watchdog functions that make the bats look so omnipotent, and the low murmur of wind that never lets them totally forget they’re in a subterranean hollow in the earth. 

He thinks about Bruce upstairs, doing whatever it is he does to let himself have this. His single-minded focus lets him force precision out of everything he does, but that doesn’t make Bruce good at people. Even when they’re tools in a way Bruce is comfortable with, they’re never just that. Tim wonders a lot if that’s the real reason he’s never done well without a Robin, because he needs to be reminded that there are people beneath the chess pieces of Gotham. 

Tim rolls his eyes and scrubs his hand over his face. Or maybe Bruce just has a thing for the nubile. Tim thinks too much.

*

Tim comes upstairs in an old pair of sweats and a Gotham University tee shirt with a hole near the collar, and follows the soft sounds and good smells coming from the kitchen. There’s a tendency among the elite who know Bruce and the capes who know Batman to assume that neither would last a week without being taken care of by someone, and that’s not really an incorrect assumption, but not for the reasons they think.

He pauses at the kitchen door, leaning against the frame to watch Bruce. He doesn’t look like they both just came gasping and needy twenty minutes earlier. Standing at the stove, sleeves rolled neatly back, he looks -- Tim doesn’t know. He has no frame of reference for what Bruce would be without Batman, and nothing easily comes to mind. Bruce is so thoroughly defined by what he does, even as he’s portioning food onto plates and hesitating before he changes the dials on the stove. 

Tim smiles behind his hand. He is quietly, secretly endeared by Bruce’s haplessness when it comes to domesticity. He can’t help it. 

“Here,” Tim says, walking barefoot into the kitchen. “Let me?” 

Bruce looks up and Tim can feel the physical weight of his gaze as he takes Tim in, damp hair and scrubbed clean skin and worn, comfortable clothes. The corner of his mouth twitches in...appreciation? Affection? Want? Tim couldn’t swear to any one of the three and he’d possibly put smart money on all of them playing their part. 

He steps back from the stove and wipes his hands on the cloth hung neatly over the oven handle. Tim takes his place between the stove and Bruce, aware of the heat coming off them both and the rich smell of the food. This is another kind of happiness that sometimes reaches up and overwhelms him when he has it. Knowing he has a home, and a place does something strange to Tim’s middle. 

“Go sit down,” he says, glancing at Bruce from the corner of his eye. “Let me -- let me take care of you.” 

Something flares bright and sharp and overwhelming in Bruce’s eyes for a moment and Tim can feel the same sudden hot burst in the center of his chest. He couldn’t honestly say which one of them first brought this thing to the table, suggesting it in so many uncomfortable, twisted up ways that were too violently aware of what they are to the world. 

But Bruce pushes it down, and smiles. It’s a real smile, not the kind meant to charm the board of Wayne Enterprises or make muggers piss themselves. “Very well,” he says, holding up his hands. He hesitates for a moment, then leans in and kisses Tim’s temple. They’re figuring how to do this in the light. 

Tim ate before he left the theater and he’s wired enough on almost-nervous energy that he’s not really hungry. He overfills one plate, taking longer than he really needs to so he can gather some of his equilibrium back together. Bruce is uncomfortable with domesticity and easy affection in equal measure, but he tries. It’s the effort that gets to Tim, and knowing that it’s for his benefit. He opens the silverware drawer with mostly steady hands and thinks _You’re getting what you want_ and _You’re allowed to get what you want_ before he pushes through the door to the dining room. 

Dick has told Tim that in the misty days of yore, when Bruce was but a new Batman and Dick a young Robin, they used to eat at opposite ends of the long table. That lasted a solid two years, until Dick finally got tired of having to yell conversations across the ten foot expanse separating them or sitting in silence altogether. Tim has always wondered where Jason sat for the first meal he and Bruce ever shared, but Jason remains a raw, untreated spot. 

It never occurred to Tim to sit anywhere but as close to Bruce as possible. 

Bruce is at the head of table, with two glasses of wine and the bottle in front of him. Tim grins and bobs a little curtsy that makes Bruce huff out a laugh. He can feel Bruce’s eyes track him as he walks along the table to the head, as he sets the plate down, as he straightens and clasps his hands in the small of his back. There’s a joke to be made about the possibility of French maid costumes coming into play, but. Tim is languidly half hard in his sweats, so he really shouldn’t be throwing stones here. 

“Not hungry?” Bruce asks. 

Tim shakes his head. “I ate before I came.” 

Bruce hums acknowledgement. Tim licks his lips and waits, conscious of the sudden uptick of his heartbeat and the not so distant pulse of blood in his ears. He could get down on the floor and sit at Bruce’s knees, just like a -- a good pet. He’s done it before and there was an undeniably enjoyable hedonism in sucking Bruce off beneath the table knowing that there was no one to catch them. 

But part of Tim admitting what he wants is letting go enough to get it. So he waits as Bruce adjusts his plate and arranges his silverware. Because he’s not a saint, Tim asks, “Where do you -- Where should I be?”

He sees the small smile Bruce tries to keep to himself. Then he looks up, eyes stupidly blue and Tim inhales sharply. “Here, boy,” he says, laying a hand on the table. Tim cocks his head slightly and Bruce raises his eyebrow. 

Well, then. 

Tim feels a little foolish as he climbs up and sits, settling with Bruce in the bracket of his legs. There are warm spots high up on his cheeks that Tim has no doubt will flare into a genuinely, stupidly embarrassing blush given the smallest reason. Tim straightens his back and tries to ignore the way his cock wants to interpret Bruce between his spread legs. Bruce skims his palms up Tim’s thighs and God, that doesn’t help, not at all.

“Hello,” Bruce says, making a fair attempt at mildness. 

Tim laughs and presses his palm to his mouth. “Hi,” he says, muffled. 

The look Bruce gives him is amused and knowing, and maybe just a touch predatory around the edges. “Hand me that plate, boy,” he instructs. Tim doesn’t understand, and then he does, and then he’s flooding with heat that he can’t categorize. He obeys as quickly as he can, fingers fumbling again. 

Bruce holds the food with one hand and forks up a piece of curry -- Tim’s favorite. Alfred should be sainted for many things, his ability to be circumspect high among them. “Open your mouth,” Bruce orders. 

Tim is _burning_ and he does. Bruce slips the fork into his mouth and the spice of the curry bursts pleasantly across Tim’s tongue. He makes a noise he doesn’t mean to, low and throaty and appreciative. His hands lift from the table, but he doesn’t know where to settle them or what to do with them, so he presses them back down as he swallows. 

“Good boy,” Bruce says. “You need to eat.”

“Yes, thank you--” the _dad_ (or _daddy_ ) hangs unsaid in the air between them. Tim swallows hard. “Thank you, Mom.” 

“You’re welcome,” Bruce says in a low, promising voice. “Boy.”

*

When the last of the food is eaten, Bruce settles his hands on Tim’s hips and kisses the spice out of his mouth. Between them they’ve drunk half the wine -- not enough to even really be tipsy, just suffused with an easy warmth that Tim can feel from the top of his head down to his feet.

Bruce skims his hands up and down the length of Tim’s spine and Tim curls his hands around Bruce’s shoulders. Tim imagines, in the small part of his brain that isn’t entirely focused on the steady sweep of Bruce’s tongue, that this is the most stereotypically teenage thing he’s ever done. Except there are no parents to catch them at kissing, and even if Alfred’s absence didn’t preclude such awkwardness, his consummate discretion would never allow it. 

Alfred calls it necking, Tim thinks, and laughs a little with his eyes slipped half shut. 

Bruce pulls back, nipping at Tim’s bottom lip. “Is something funny?” 

Tim shakes his head, reaching up to push fingers through Bruce’s thick, dark hair. “Just a passing thought.” 

“I see.” Bruce settles his hands on Tim’s hips and looks at him, his expression caught between half a dozen different emotions that Tim recognizes and still can’t identify. 

Bruce isn’t like Dick, who seems to purposefully experience all his emotions as deeply and intensely as he can. Tim has the idea that part of that is because of Bruce, and Dick knowing that Batman needed a soul to balance the scales. If Bruce were Dick, they’d have sat down and hashed all this out years ago, before time and hurt and the sheer fucking weight of what they do could weigh them down first. 

Tim is self-aware enough that he probably would have gone running the other way. He is, in truth, no more comfortable with what he feels than Bruce is. 

“What?” Bruce presses, dragging his fingers up Tim’s spine beneath his shirt. The brush of calluses against skin makes Tim inhale.

“I --” Tim begins, then stops and swallows, smiling crookedly. “This is where I want to be.” 

Bruce hums a noncommittal noise, which Tim suspects is as close to verbalized agreement as he’s going to get sitting where they are. Things shift and change every second when they’re together, and boundaries of what they can do and say to each other are almost always in flux. Tim is willing to call that one the perils of having so many identities to keep track of. They deal in as much honesty as they can manage at any given moments. 

Tim is getting better about not assuming the worst when he isn’t given an answer. It is, when he thinks about it, not entirely dissimilar to the way Dick can read Bruce’s gradations of mood without a second thought. For a brief moments he imagines Dick sitting where he is and the thought is both incredibly pretty and enough to make a raw jealous thing in his chest growl in discontent. 

It’s possible Bruce sees the musings on Tim’s face and it’s just as possible that he’d had the plan all along. Either way, before Tim can sink down into chewing over the varied and sundry messed up dynamics in their family, Bruce’s hands are under his thighs and Bruce is standing, hauling Tim up with him.

Tim yelps a little, grabbing at Bruce’s shoulders to keep from overbalancing and sending them both sprawling onto the floor. Or, really, Bruce is strong enough that that probably wouldn’t happen, but it’s the principal. Tim didn’t let Dick cheerfully force flexibility and balance into his bones to not use it when called upon. 

And besides, the flail makes Bruce chuckle, in low, promisingly growled way as he hikes Tim up. Tim locks his ankles in the small of Bruce’s back and the low pulse of pleasant heat that had settled in his hips through dinner suddenly spikes into something much more immediate. 

“Where are we going?” Tim asks. 

“Where do you think?” 

By the time Bruce kicks the door to the master suite open, Tim is already hard behind the soft folds of his sweats and Bruce is damp with sweat at the collar of his shirt -- and Tim doesn’t really think it’s from the exertion of carrying him up the stairs. Bruce shoves the door closed behind them and his bedroom is dark except for the light from the moon that comes in through the curtains. 

Tim kisses at Bruce’s jaw and neck as he’s carried to the bed. “Want you,” he sighs. “I want you.” 

“You’re needy, boy,” Bruce growls, and tosses Tim onto the bed. “Strip.” 

These are the moments when the line between Bruce and Batman thins out, no matter how insistent Bruce remains in the cold light of day that there will be no inclusion of this in the Mission. They’re not yet at fucking in uniform on the hood of the Batmobile, but that growl and the orders are more the Bat than Bruce Wayne. And Tim still scrambles to obey. 

He shucks off his shirt and throws it, shimmies out his sweats and kicks them onto the floor. Bruce is undressing with far, far more control than Tim thinks makes sense. He pushes his shirt and trousers and boxers down the laundry chute and stands at the end of the bed, arms crossed over his chest. He is so irrationally big looming over Tim, and he’s beautiful. 

“Hold onto the headboard,” he orders. 

Tim reaches up and curls his hands around the solid wooden slats. He knows this isn’t the same bed Bruce had when Tim first came to the manor. That thing was massive and felt like it was carved of solid wood. It had four posters and there’s no way on God’s earth Tim would have been able to hold on. 

“You will not let go,” Bruce says. “Is that clear, boy?” 

Tim nods. “Yeah -- yes.” Tim makes himself breath in slow and steady, makes himself consciously slow the beat of his heart. He will not be a teenager that comes all over himself from the first touch. He _will not_. 

Bruce looks at him for no more than an extra beat, like he’s leaving space for Tim to add something. Tim knows what it is and the word is on the tip of his tongue, but. But he swallows it down, because he knows that forcing this stuff just leaves them sitting on opposite sides of the room with an ocean of their collective issues between them. Bruce doesn’t demand it. Tim knows he’s willing to wait. 

“Bend your knees.”

Tim does. 

The position is open and exposed, made moreso by Bruce staring down at him like he’s a particularly Gordian knot of a problem. Tim shifts his shoulders and wiggles on the bed, knowing that he’s fucking up the sheets and not caring. His cock is hard along his hip and he _needs_ , because they don’t get time like this all that often. 

“God,” Bruce says, so low that Tim’s fairly certain he wasn’t meant to hear it. And then he’s climbing onto the bed. 

Tim expects Bruce to crawl up him, so he can press them together from shoulder to hip. He skin aches for the sweet, hot slide of their cocks together in Bruce’s palm and Bruce’s teeth on his shoulders and collarbone. Bruce’s cock is thick and blood dark, and if Tim were a less obedient boy he’d be begging for it in his mouth. He whines a little instead, arching his back. 

“Hush, boy,” Bruce growls, though it’s tinged with amusement. 

He lays himself out on his belly between Tim’s legs, and Tim genuinely doesn’t realize what he’s going to do until his arms are around Tim’s thighs to yank him down and he licks a stripe along the underside of Tim’s cock. 

Tim babbles a noise that might be a curse and sounds largely like garbled shock. Bruce laughs -- Tim can feel the rolling vibration of it and that makes him curse again, yanking hard enough against the headboard that it bangs back audibly against the wall. 

“What was that?” Bruce asks, lifting his head. “I couldn’t understand you, boy.” 

It’s always in these inconvenient moments that Bruce decides to deploy his sense of humor. Tim keens, tossing his head back and forth on the pillow. He manages, “Please, _please_ ,” and the hint of Bruce’s smile he catches is as predatory as Batman scenting answers. 

“Again.”

“Please,” Tim yells. “Please, Bruce, Batman. _Please_.” 

Bruce leans back in and licks another hot, messy stripe along Tim’s cock. He’s leaking, he can feel the wet of it against his belly. It takes next to everything Tim has not to fuck his hips up into that touch. Curling his toes into the blankets isn’t enough, not when Bruce is breathing hot, damp air against him.

Bruce drags his tongue back down, but he doesn’t stop at the base of Tim’s cock. He keeps going onto his sac and that’s not anything Tim is at all prepared for. “Oh fuck,” he yells, snapping his head up to look down and make sure he’s feeling what he thinks he is. Bruce looks up at him through his eyelashes, eyes so dark Tim can barely see the blue in them. “I can’t,” Tim groans. “I can’t.” 

“You can, boy,” Bruce says, close enough that Tim can feel the brush of lips against his skin. 

Tim is trying to think of way to explain that he can’t, this is too much and different, this is everything focused on him. But Bruce’s tongue is pressing against him again and then Bruce’s mouth is _around_ his sac, wet and hot and sucking and Tim doesn’t have any conscious thought that’s not screaming at the sensation of it. His hips snap up and he lifts off the bed, heels digging in and spine twisting in ways it should be possible to contort. The vulnerability of it makes Tim’s brain cycle down into panic and pleasure and a steady chant of yes, yes, yes. 

He wasn’t a virgin when he and Bruce began, but he wasn’t all that far from it. The well of what he thinks he likes is far smaller than what things he’s tried and can honestly assess. This is fantasy and the fact that Bruce knows means that Tim’s privacy controls on his laptop probably aren’t as strong as he thought. 

He doesn’t, in the moment, care. 

Bruce rolls Tim’s balls in his mouth, sucking in slow pulses that seem designed to shove Tim against the edge and keep him from going over. Tim is aware, distantly, of the sounds he’s making and knows that he couldn’t stop them if there was a gun to his head. The bed smells of Bruce’s aftershave and soap and Bruce’s cheeks are just faintly rough with stubble on the insides of Tim’s thighs. 

When he pulls off, Tim makes a noise of desperation and need. “Please,” he groans, not entirely sure what he’s asking for. 

“I’ll take care of you, boy,” Bruce promises and that makes Tim turn his face into his arm for a moment. He believes it. He still has to breathe through the sound of it being said. “Put you legs on my shoulders,” Bruce orders. “Lift your hips.” 

Tim has an inkling this time, an impossible idea, as he obeys. He feels laid bare, open and exposed. Bruce’s breath is warm and damp against him. Tim settles his heels on the heavy musculature of Bruce’s shoulders and ignores the strain the position puts on his back. The stretch is a minor anchor that he doubts will last. 

“What?” Tim asks, tongue thick and clumsy. “Bruce.” 

“Hush.” Bruce kisses the inside of his thigh. “I will take care of you.” 

Then the rough, broad flat of his tongue presses against Tim’s hole. 

Tim has no contextualization for the sensation, just the sudden raw scream of his nerves and his body jack knifing into it and away from it in equal measure, so much that Bruce’s arms tighten around his thighs until he can do little more than flex his hips back and forth. He doesn’t know if it feels good or bad or just overwhelmingly strange. 

Bruce’s tongue is hot and mobile, licking and pushing against him. There’s a tangle of logical things Tim knows about erogenous zones and nerves endings clanging like white noise in the back of his mind, but it’s irrelevant. He’s clutching the headboard so tightly he feels like the tendons on his fingers are going to snap, and the cycle of need is winding higher and higher in his hips. 

It must feel good. It _must_ , but it’s mostly _Bruce_ and Tim is his boy. 

“I -- I --” Tim gasps. “Please, let me -- _please_.”

Bruce pulls off and Tim’s spine bows. “What, boy?”

“I need,” he repeats, aware that his cheeks are damp. 

“You need?”

Tim whines an answer, the words beyond where he can go. 

Bruce lifts his head. “You need to come, boy?”

“Yes,” Tim sobs, rocking his shoulders back and forth like he can find a way to shiver away from this thing that is too fucking much. 

“Ask me, boy.”

“Please, can I?” Tim cries. “Please, Bruce. Please, please.” 

He feels the low grumble of pleasure more than he hears it. “Yes, boy. You may.” 

Tim’s vision blacks out for the force of his orgasm and it feels like the only reason he doesn’t shatter is Bruce holding him in place, anchoring him down to earth. The aftershocks are nearly painful and Tim opens his eyes and realizes he’s still leaking tears from the corners. He’s aware of Bruce moving, crawling up and settling straddled across Tim’s stomach. 

“Easy, boy,” Bruce says, voice low and rough. He brushes his thumb beneath Tim’s eyes. “Easy. I have you.” 

Tim nods, half-frantic, half so fuck dumb he can barely remember his name. Bruce hunches down and cups Tim’s head in his big, solid palm. Tim’s hands hurt wrapped around the headboard, but he doesn’t care. He slits his eyes open and looks at Bruce’s hand jacking his own cock, the gleam of sweat over his broad chest, and the look in his eyes, as though Tim is something wondrous. 

“Nn,” Tim moans, making less an offer than a noise and opens his mouth. He wants. He can. 

“Hush,” Bruce tells him. “Be still.” 

It’s very quiet as Bruce finishes himself, just the slick sound of his hand and their breath. He tightens his fingers in Tim’s hair when he comes on Tim’s neck and chin and mouth and yes, God. Yes. Tim flicks out his tongue and licks his mouth clean. Bruce holds still for a long, long moment, shoulders rolled in and moving in time to slow, controlled breaths. 

“Good boy,” Bruce growls, when he can look up. “My. Good boy.” 

Then he’s rolling off Tim and kissing him, urging Tim gently to let go of the headboard and wiping him down with damp disposable clothes from the bedside table. Tim is flying and drowning still, grasping at Bruce with clumsy fingers. 

“I know,” Bruce murmurs in his ear, once he’s clean. “Sleep. I’ve got you.”

*

Tim is half asleep.

No. Tim is mostly asleep. 

He’s just barely awake enough to have any awareness -- he’s warm and comfortable, there’s a solid weight beside him that he’s hoping is Bruce, and his internal clock suggests it’s not quite late enough for it to be morning rather than dawn. The part of him that will always run on patrol hours suggests that means it’s time to go to bed and Tim hums a little, shifting down deeper into the pillow and blankets and closer to Bruce’s side. 

“I know you’re listening.” Bruce’s voice is low, and not at all sleep rough. The joke -- the family joke -- is that Bruce doesn’t need sleep at all, he lives on justice alone. Tim knows that’s not true, but the errant memory of Dick saying it and Bruce’s sour frog face in response makes him smile. He makes a noncommittal noise and turns his face into the crook his arm. 

Bruce shifts, and his hand lands between Tim’s shoulder blades. The weight of it is almost soothing, in a strange way. 

“I know,” Bruce repeats, “you’re listening. I know you’re awake.” 

Tim hums again. “Little bit,” he mumbles, rolling his head to the side just enough to be able to crack one eye open and look at Bruce. 

The light coming in through the cracks in the curtains says he was right, it’s the hazy gray of early dawn. Bruce’s hair is mussed a little from sleep, and his shoulders and chest are bare and broad. Tim lets his eyes skate over the scars; some are the sore pink of the newly healed, others are so old and silvery they can barely be seen. This is the only moment of the day when Bruce ever really looks calm and easy, like he’s existing on time borrowed from the weight he carries on his shoulders. 

“Good boy,” he says softly, and eases his hand down Tim’s spine. 

Tim shivers a little as the blankets push back and cool air hits his skin. He has one arm beneath his head and the other beneath his chest and Bruce’s hand is so impossibly big. He stops at the small of Tim’s back, thumb sweeping over the little knots of his spine. The way he looks at Tim is so utterly intent, like he’s seeing through skin and bone to the spark that makes Tim who he is. 

A not insignificant number of Gotham’s criminal element honest to God believes that the Batman is psychic. Tim can sort of understand that, when Bruce looks at him that way. His mouth crooks into a small smile and then his hand sliding lower, pushing Tim’s boxers down until the elastic settles where his ass and thighs meet. 

Tim turns his head a little farther. “Hi,” he says, still muzzy and happy in an uncomplicated way that comes from everything still feeling a little dreamlike. “I want you.” 

Bruce chuckles, though it’s more quiet affection than anything more sharply promising. “You have me, boy.” He palms at Tim’s ass and Tim’s dick, trapped through it is in the tangle of boxers and sheets takes interest. “Count off.” 

He is just asleep enough that he can’t gather together what Bruce is saying until the first smack lands with a bright, sharp flare of pain and heat. Tim keens, flexing his hips back against Bruce’s hand. He’s not awake enough to process anything more than pain and _yes_ , toes curling beneath the blankets bunched up on the bottom half of the bed. 

Bruce leans in and kisses him, deep and thorough. He bites at Tim’s bottom lip until Tim has to shift enough to loose one of his hands and drag his fingers over the rough rasp of Bruce’s stubbled cheek. “I said count off.”

“Ah, one,” Tim says, his voice little more than a rough croak. “One.” 

“Good boy.” 

Bruce shifts back and smacks him again on the same spot. Tim grunts, “Two,” and thinks that if Bruce does that he’s going to have bruises, and smiles again. They have all day and that means allowing the little hurts that make a difference when they’re on the streets. Not allowed, usually. But they have all day. 

Tim counts through the first dozen before he has to shift up onto his knees a little because he’s hard and can’t find the words to beg through the haze. He’s gone from half asleep to flying and it’s such an easy slide from one to the other, with no stops in the middle to have to think about who he is or what he’s doing or why. “I see,” Bruce says, “And you’ll put your hips back down if you want me to do anything about it.”

Midway through the twenties, there isn’t any skin left on Tim’s ass that hasn’t taken a fair share of blows. He can feel the heat radiating off his skin and he’s making soft, whimpering noises before he can get the numbers out. He’s so hard he aches, damp with sweat and digging his fingers into his chest to keep from grinding down on the mattress. 

Every half dozen or so Bruce stops and leans in to kiss Tim or suck a mark to his shoulder or to bite hard and lingering at his neck. Tim can just see the half moon indents from the corner of his eye. He wants to keep them, for as long as he can. 

Tim shakes his way through, “Thirty, _please_ ,” and then Bruce is hauling Tim on top of him and they’re pressed together from chest to knees. Bruce is naked and Tim hadn’t realized and the shock of their cocks coming together is enough to make him groan from the bottom of his chest. “Please,” he repeats. 

“Hush,” Bruce says. “I’ve got you.”

One hand pushes through Tim’s hair, pulling his head down so Tim’s face is pressed to the curve of Bruce’s shoulder, and the other scrapes blunt nails over his ass, shoving their hips together in a bright, shocking drag of their cocks together. Tim hands splay over Bruce’s chest, his nails digging down on their own accord. Their hips find a rocking rhythm against each other. 

They’re rubbing off against each other. It’s needy and close, just their quiet panting breath and soft slick sound of their skin. 

Bruce bites at the shell of Tim’s ear. “I want you to come, boy,” he growls, and Tim does helplessly, endlessly.

*

Tim drifts as the sun rises, curled on top of Bruce in the hazy place between awake and asleep. Bruce’s hand soothes up and down his spine in a faintly rough pull of his callused fingertips against Tim’s skin. The contentment doesn’t feel borrowed and that’s rare enough that Tim has no real need to swim up out of it.

It’s Bruce who cranes his neck to look at the clock and says, “Come, boy. You need a shower.” 

Some vaguely impudent part of Tim wants to protest that maybe he _likes_ smelling like Bruce’s come, but that flippancy has never really belonged to Tim. The thought makes him smile as he reluctantly rolls off Bruce’s chest to the cool side of the bed. Bruce sits up with a soft groan, skimming fingers through his hair as he checks his phone. His cheeks are shadowed with stubble Tim thinks lazily about feeling against his thighs. 

“Anything important?” Tim asks. He’s aware -- they’re both aware -- that these days are contingent on the needs of Gotham, the League, and the fate of the planet. It’d happened more than once that an alarm has gone off with Tim tied to the big desk in the study or bent over the hood of the Batmobile and they’ve both had to dress and go to work with the cobwebs of this thing clinging to the back of their minds. 

Bruce sets his phone back on the side table. “No. Now, come here.” 

Tim has half a second to wonder what Bruce is doing before he’s being gathered into Bruce’s arms like a bride and lifted off the bed. It is so utterly ridiculous -- and Tim is so thoroughly sated -- that he can’t help but snort and loop his arms around Bruce’s neck. “You’re ridiculous.” 

“Hush, boy,” Bruce says mildly. 

The ensuite bathroom attached to Bruce’s room isn’t the most spacious in the manor, but it’s up there. Bruce sets Tim on the counter and kisses him lightly, almost furtively. There are probably cameras hidden in the corners somewhere, but if anyone’s watching it’s only Babs. Tim has never asked, but he’s always wondered if she likes the little moments as much as she delights in keeping footage of all the fucking that happens in the manor. He likes to believe she does. 

Bruce turns the shower spray on and holds his forearm underneath it until it warms properly. The he extends a hand to Tim. “Come here, boy.” 

Tim slides down and lets himself be pushed into the shower. The water is as warm as he likes it and Bruce fits himself behind Tim’s back and runs his hands over Tim’s hips and belly. Tim feels distinctly petted in these moments, with Bruce touching him and sucking deep, sprawling marks into his shoulders and neck. It is as soft as Bruce ever gets. 

“Close your eyes,” Bruce says, voice low as it can be without becoming a growl. “Tip back your head.”

This is, to Tim, the most indulgent thing he ever does and nothing else ever feels as frankly hedonistic. He tips his head down and closes his eyes, listening as Bruce reaches for the bottle of shampoo and opens the cap. Bruce is humming softly and tunelessly, then his fingers are pushing into Tim’s hair and Tim sighs from deep down at the bottom of his lungs.

Bruce’s hands are always strong and precise and Tim won’t pretend many of his early fantasies didn’t exist in Bruce holding him down, the leather and kevlar smell of the gauntlets, and patterns of finger-shaped bruises left on his skin. But this is a different focus, Bruce’s fingers pressing out the shape of Tim’s head like he’s memorizing it again and again. 

Tim asked, once, why Bruce likes doing this so much. The only answer Bruce had was that it was difficult to think of impractical reasons to touch Tim, more difficult still to allow such impulses when they came. Tim kissed him and thought _you touched-starved freak_ , and made Dick promise to hug Bruce the next time they saw each other. 

When Tim’s knees make him sway a little, Bruce’s arm is suddenly around his waist to steady. Tim hears Bruce detach the shower head and then water’s sluicing over his head and neck. “Am I clean?” Tim asks. 

Bruce kisses the back of his neck. “You’ll do.”

*

Bruce towels them both dry as Tim leans against the counter, still warm and loose in the deep down places where he’s used to there only being worry and over-thinking. The touch is thorough and firm and careful, and Tim lets his eyes roam over Bruce’s broad shoulders and arms and chest, the solid musculature of his belly and his thighs. Bruce is scarred and furred, and Tim hopes that he never stops wanting him like he does now.

When he’s finished, Bruce hangs the towels on the back of the bathroom door and eases up against Tim. The difference in their height is never so apparent as in these moments, when Bruce’s soft cock is against Tim’s belly and Tim has to tip his head back to look at Bruce’s face. Tim splays his hands over Bruce’s chest, scraping his nails over the hair and spray of scar tissue from a fight before Tim’s time. 

“I like you like this,” Bruce tells him, sliding fingers through Tim’s damp hair. 

“Naked?” Tim asks, grinning and pushing his head against Bruce’s hand. He’s aware of how kittenish the gesture is and it’ll embarrass him later when he’s watching the security feeds alone, but that’s later. “I’m shocked.” 

Bruce grumbles out a laugh. “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. I’m sure you’re shocked.” 

“Astounded, even.” 

Bruce tugs on Tim’s hair, pulling his head back just enough to make his adam’s apple jut out. It’s mild enough, but the inherent promise between that and being caught between the counter and Bruce’s bulk makes Tim swallow hard and shiver. The corners of Bruce’s mouth quirk into something not entirely unlike a smile. “I like you like this, as well.” 

That makes Tim laugh a little, high and breathless and hummed. “I’m still shocked.” 

“You are less obedient than you give the impression of being,” Bruce says conversationally. He leans in and nips at Tim’s jaw. 

Tim’s eyes slip shut and the warmth starts to become heat. “I can be -- I can be good.” 

Bruce cups Tim’s jaw in his other hand, drags his thumb along the curve of Tim’s bottom lip. “You don’t have much choice in that, boy.” 

The noise Tim makes is a soft, keened thing and Bruce grumbles something between a laugh and a growl. They still have the day, the entire day, and Tim feels some part of his uncaring lizard brain unwinding. It’s a long, careful ease down into this place and Tim has come to accept that he will never be able to have it enough. 

“I want you to say like this for the rest of the day, boy,” Bruce says. 

Tim slits his eyes open. “Like -- like what?” 

“Naked.” Bruce swipes his finger over Tim’s mouth. “And wanton.” 

There’s no verbal reply Tim can offer that won’t come out at least an octave higher than normal and so shuttered with begging and please that he’d only succeed in embarrassing himself. And he’s not quite yet to the point where that doesn’t matter. He swallows hard and nods, then bows his head in deference and assent. He can be good, he can. 

Bruce curls his lip in a promisingly feral imitation of a smile. “Go to the study. On the floor by the desk chair. Understood?”

“Yes,” Tim manages, rough and breathless. 

Thing about Bruce -- among the many, many _things_ about him that Tim has catalogued and analyzed and categorized -- is that sheer ungodly extent of his patience never stops being surprising. 

Tim doesn’t run downstairs like he forgot to take a towel into the bathroom and he’s trying not to give Alfred an eyeful. He walks slowly and deliberately, as though there isn’t anything that could possibly be seen as odd in being naked. In the study, he takes a moment to neaten the papers strewn over Bruce’s desk, eyes flicking over the memos and reports from Wayne Enterprises’ R&D and financial and development and charitable divisions. 

He can be good. He can be useful. 

And then he kneels beside Bruce’s chair. A big thing of heavy wood and well-worn leather that bears nearly no resemblance to the ergonomic metal thing he has in his WE office. Tim suspects, though he has never asked, that the entire setup was put together by Thomas Wayne long before he was born, and that Bruce inherited it like so many other things. But Tim has never asked. 

The carpet is thick and plush, even comfortable. Tim knows the quiet sounds of the study almost as well as he knows the cave. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks softly, just fractionally out of rhythm with Tim’s internal sense of what it should be. Every now and then gusts of autumn wind make the house sigh a little, and the floorboards creak despite the lack of footsteps. 

He thinks about Bruce pushing his weight against Tim, and Bruce biting bruises along his spine. He thinks about Bruce laying him out flat on his belly and using his tongue, then fingers, then the sweet slow burn of his cock. Tim bites the inside of his lip to keep from making a noise and presses his palms flat against his thighs. 

The manor’s stately age means Tim hears Bruce come down the stairs to the foyer and walk down the hall before he pushes through the study doors. Tim looks up at him through his eyelashes -- sees his slacks and button down and the costume he wears to be the CEO of Wayne Enterprises. It’s always less real to Tim than the suit, and far more of a role to be played than being Batman, and it still makes warmth shudder down along his spine to pool in his belly. 

Bruce hums a noise of -- acknowledgement? approval? Tim isn’t sure. 

He crosses from the door and sits. Tim hears the shuffle of papers and his laptop opening. And then, almost absently, Bruce’s fingers push through his hair and Tim lets his head drop into the touch. “Good boy,” Bruce says. “Now be still.”

*

In the early days, when the things they did were just beginning to feel less like desperation, Bruce told Tim that he was the only one who has ever really been good at stillness. The knot of thing in Tim’s chest at the time had been half fear and half blinding need, so he hadn’t asked what that was supposed to mean. But it was something he carried with him, tucked deep down in the place where he’s always kept the really honest things Bruce says.

It took Bruce saying, “I want,” and Tim being able to answer him without a childhood spent creating something untenable and impossible in the way to get to where they are. Tim doesn’t need to ask any more -- he understands. 

Tim rubs his cheek against Bruce’s thigh, feeling the solid, heavy muscle that he hides so very well behind his suits and the affectation of a wealthy, well-meaning, clueless socialite. Bruce smells clean and heavy, like his soap and aftershave and beneath that the armor that Tim is fairly certain can’t be washed out of his skin at this point. 

Bruce shifts his phone to his other hand and soothes his palm over the back of Tim’s neck. His calluses are heavy and the right kind of rough. People don’t ask about them often, but they have. The first time Tim ever heard Bruce wave them away with a casual line about being bad at tennis, Dick had leaned over and said, “Yeah, no, they buy that,” in his ear. Tim had excused himself to the bathroom to laugh into the crook of his elbow. 

“Yes, of course,” Bruce says, pushing his palm against the muscle at the bottom of Tim’s neck. Tim makes a low noise and he pushes harder, adding his thumb to Tim’s shoulder. “I do understand, but Wayne Enterprises has always maintained a deep commitment to charitable causes.”

It’s odd how Bruce’s voice sounds so different when he’s being Bruce Wayne, with all the attendant history. Tim drops his head lower and pushes his shoulders up into Bruce’s hand. Bruce wraps his long fingers around the back of Tim’s neck and _holds_. Tim digs his toes into the carpet and arches his spine. 

“Have numbers to me by the end of the week and I’ll take a look,” Bruce assures the phone. “Excellent.” 

Tim waits until he’s tapped one handed at the screen, then set the phone on his desk with a mildly disgusted exhalation. Tim lifts his head and sets his chin on Bruce’s thigh. “I thought we weren’t working this weekend,” he says, arching an eyebrow. 

“If I thought you really hated sitting quietly at my knee, I wouldn’t be.” 

“Fair enough,” Tim laughs and, unwillingly, Bruce’s expression relaxes into something more wryly amused. He leans back in his chair and starts smoothing down Tim’s hair, like he used to do when Tim had been hurt and he could justify the gentleness. Tim sighs and closes his eyes. 

“Good boy,” Bruce says. “Get under the desk.” 

It’s not Batman and it’s not the voice Tim has heard him use on the Wayne Enterprises board of directors. It’s not even what he sounds like when he’s disappointed in one of his children, or angry, or scared for them or any of the thousand damned voices he has to get his point across. 

It’s something that he only has here. It settles low and heavy in Tim’s hips and wraps around the base of his skull. Tim sucks in a breath and moves. 

There’s an odd, hindbrain comfort to being under Bruce’s desk, with solid, old wood at his back and either side. It’s dim and warmer from body heat and the smallness of the space -- Bruce’s scent is stronger and heavier such that Tim imagined it as a tangible touch against his skin. He _fits_ in the bracket of Bruce’s legs and it feels good to kneel there and rub his cheek against Bruce’s thigh. 

Bruce Wayne’s clothing is cut purposefully to downplay the raw, physically aggressive power of his frame. Tim is always mildly thrilled to feel the solid shape of his musculature beneath the expensive, trendy clothing Brucie Wayne wears. Tim closes his eyes and inhales slowly and deeply, and presses his mouth high up on Bruce’s inner thigh to exhale. 

Tim can hear the low, sharp noise Bruce makes. “Don’t tease, boy,” comes the mild warning a moment later, Bruce’s control firmly in place. “There are repercussions for that.”

“I know,” Tim murmurs, smiling to himself. 

It’s close, but not really awkward work to unbuckle Bruce’s heavy leather belt, pop the button on his fly, and ease down the zipper of his trousers. The innate furtiveness of being hidden as he reaches into Bruce’s boxers and eases out his cock always makes Tim think, for at least a moment, about his more tawdry fantasies. Alleyways and bathrooms and Matches Malone, mostly. Tim shivers and strokes Bruce’s cock slow and careful. 

He doesn’t even have his mouth open when Bruce’s phone rings. 

Tim goes very, very still.

“I,” Bruce says deliberately, “didn’t say to stop, boy.”

The heat that floods through Tim is hotly, brightly overwhelming and the rush of arousal down his spine is very nearly painful. His hand strokes down Bruce’s cock with an automatic obedience that doesn’t require his conscious mind to be up to speed.

Tim hears Bruce pick up his phone and then, “Hello? Oh, hello, it’s good to hear from you.”

He sounds so utterly, fucking _normal_. Tim’s hips buck up against empty air. 

Bruce gets harder and harder in Tim’s hand and the cadence of Bruce Wayne chatting with an old business contact drops away to a white noise in the back of Tim’s mind; it’s infinitely less important than the _someone’s listening_ beating in his blood. He thinks he can physically feel the throb of it in the veins in his thighs and neck and temples and cock. 

Tim drags the rough flat of his tongue along the slit of Bruce’s cock. 

Bruce cough. “Forgive me, I’m at the end of the last summer cold of the season.” Tim licks his lips, then sucks the head of Bruce’s cock into his mouth. It’s a groan, Tim can hear the fucking groan. “Damn things do settle in your chest, don’t they?”

Tim shifts up on his knees, circled a hand around the base of Bruce’s cock, and swallows him down as deeply and messily into his throat as he can manage without gagging. The salt of Bruce’s skin and precome flood Tim’s mouth and there isn’t enough room for him to do much more than bob his head -- frankly, Tim doubts he has the coordination for anything more elaborate. 

The conversation above his head is inane and wandering, in the way business conversations are when they’re slowly leading up to asking for a favor. Tim’s cock leaks against his thigh, but he doesn’t touch. He knows better than that. He curls the fingers of his free hand into the fabric of Bruce’s trousers until his knuckles go white. 

“Yes,” Bruce says, controlled and friendly, and only Tim and those who know him very well could detect the strain around the edges. “I’m glad to have had a chance to catch up. I’m not at the office today, but if you give my secretary a call, she’ll set up a time for us to speak more formally next week.”

Tim sucks _hard_ and works his hand. _Please_ , he thinks, entirely unsure of what he’s asking for. _Please, please._.

“Yes, until then,” Bruce says. 

And then his body tightens and his hips lift a fractional half inch from his chair and his comes down Tim’s throat. Tim swallows and swallows, frantic and needful and heedless of his hips pushing against empty air because he can’t stop them. 

Bruce’s hand slides beneath the desk and grasps Tim’s hair, yanking hard. “Goodbye,” he says, and Tim hears him set down the phone.

The movement that comes next is so sudden Tim doesn’t have time to register anything other than the fact that he’s moving. Bruce shoves back out of his chair, grabs Tim by the shoulder and tosses him down onto the antique rug. It’s soft beneath his back -- Tim has a single moment to look up at Bruce, flushed at his cheeks with his cock still out -- before more than two hundred pounds of perfectly honed muscle are stretched on top of him and pressing down. 

Tim cries out. Bruce’s thigh pushes between his legs and the shock of rough fabric against his cock is shocking in intensity. “You are indescribable, boy,” Bruce growls. Tim’s hands claw at the back of his obscenely expensive shirt. “I don’t have words for you.”

“I need -- I’m going --”

“Yes,” Bruce says. “Yes, do.”

Tim arches against him, trapped and held down and anchored, and comes.

*

Tim isn’t entirely sure how much time passes with them laying on the floor before Bruce stands and maneuvers him onto the big couch on the other side of the study. The leather is old and worn soft beneath his skin. Tim is sated enough to sprawl without much thought other than to watch Bruce through half-lidded eyes. Contentment is a warm thing sitting comfortably in the center of his chest.

He arches an eyebrow when Bruce starts unbuttoning his shirt -- nakedness is expected of _Tim_ and always seems mildly uncomfortable to Bruce. Exposure doesn’t come naturally to him. Still, Tim is hardly unappreciative of the show and the chance to take a good, long look. Bruce’s body, big and scarred and furred, seems so different in the day when the leather and rubber scent of the suit is only a faint note of scent coming off his skin. 

“Are we done working for the day?” Tim asks, as Bruce pushes down his trousers and lays them over the back of his desk chair. 

Bruce gives him a look, wry and promising. “I just don’t think I’ve got any focus left in me, sport,” he says in Brucie Wayne’s charming, mildly hapless voice, that’s gotten him exasperatedly dismissed from more board, stockholder, and business meetings than even Tim can accurately recount. 

Tim laughs lazily and and shifts up to make room for Bruce to sprawl out next to him. Bruce wraps an arm around Tim’s shoulder and pulls him back down half onto his lap. The slide of their skin together and the warm autumn sun coming through the windows strike Tim as utterly indolent. A year ago, that would have made his brain start crowing about laziness and earning his keep -- now he closes his eyes a little and listens to the thud of Bruce’s heart. 

But. Their night has passed, and if Tim’s brain can’t get him to guilt? It can make him count the seconds. 

“When is everyone getting back?” he asks, but his voice is too light in his own ears. It grates. 

Bruce shifts beneath him and suddenly Tim is entirely on his lap and there’s a hand cupping at his jaw. “Look at me, boy,” Bruce says. 

It’s not really any real reluctance to look at Bruce that makes Tim’s obedience far less willing than usual. He cracks his eyes and the blurred outline of Bruce’s face isn’t angry, and Tim didn’t expect it to be. He is as calm as ever, his thumb stroking over the hinge of Tim’s jaw. Tim exhales and opens his eyes. 

Bruce studies him for a moment. His eyes seem a lighter blue than usual, like they’re reflecting daylight and the sky outside the window. Tim presses his jaw into Bruce’s broad, callused palm and his calm bleeds back slowly. When they first began, at the end of every coming together Tim expected it to be the last. For Bruce to change his mind without discussion or even a willingness to tell Tim as much to his face. He isn’t afraid of that any longer. Not really. 

It’s a greedier reaction now, Tim thinks. And the irritated dread of not knowing how many days or weeks it will be until they can both take a night away from their lives and their jobs and the Mission. 

“They will be be back later,” Bruce says. 

Tim nods. “I know.” 

“And besides.” Bruce smiles a little, and stretches up to press a soft kiss to Tim’s jaw. “Dick knows better than to not call ahead.”

But the rest of the afternoon slides by too quickly.

*

Urgency blossoms as something heavy in the pit of Tim’s stomach. They had the night and now they’re operating on a shrinking timeframe and the needs they share that haven’t been sated loom large. As the sun starts toward the horizon, the quality of the light starts to change as it pours in through the big windows on the front of the house, and obedience becomes more needful than easy.

Bruce goes down into the cave for half an hour and leaves Tim kneeling on the study floor. Tim watches the shadows move across the carpet, forcing himself to breath in and out for slow three counts. These are the moments when Tim, in a way, resents that it’s not just them living in the manor anymore. He’s well aware that what ifs and if onlys are pointless as a rule, but still. 

If only. 

It’s some time after the big grandfather clock has bonged out five in the evening that Tim’s communicator chirps on Bruce’s desk. 

For a split second, Tim’s orders not to move override everything. That was the first thing he ever promised Bruce -- that he would try to be good, so good. And the first thing Bruce made him promise was that this couldn’t take precedence over anything else. People weren’t going to die for their need of each other. 

Tim scrambles to his feet and answers. “Yes? Bruce?”

“Come downstairs,” Bruce says. The communicator always casts his voice in a register just slightly lower than his normal speaking voice. Or maybe it’s just that Bruce isn’t capable of using Batman’s technology without sounding a little like Batman. Tim would, personally, put money on the latter, but he’s never asked. And the command, growled like that, winds up tendrils of need low in his gut that almost supercede the ticking clock in the back of his mind. 

“Yes, sir,” he says, and moves. 

It’s cool in the passage leading down and his bare skin erupts in gooseflesh. It’s cold in the actual cave; cold and the familiar hum of the computer and the lab equipment and beneath that the pulse of wings in the darkness sends something soothing and settling down Tim’s spine. 

Bruce is sitting at the computer, leaning backward in his chair with his legs spread and two lines of concentration carved between his brows. He hasn’t dressed for the night’s patrol yet, but he’s changed from the slacks and button down he had on during the day to closely cut black athletic pants and a tank. His shoulders are impossibly broad and Tim can see the faintly shining white edges of some of his scars. 

It’s difficult not feel Red Robin tugging at him, at little. Most of his equipment is at the theater, but Bruce has an extra uniform. Should Tim need it. That’s the boy scout in him, Tim thinks with a small smile. The boy scout and the father. 

Tim crosses to Bruce and kneels. The stone floor is rough and icily cold against his knees, but it’s worth it to be able to rest his head on Bruce’s thigh. Bruce’s hand pushes through his hair and rests there while he finishes scanning the report pulled up on the main screen. He’s always dealt with their time ending differently than Tim, as though reprimanding himself for the indulgence by delving back into the Mission 

“Dick called,” Bruce says eventually. “They’ll be back at seven.” 

Tim nods. It’s just a little easier, for him, to have the time set. “I understand.”

“Are you going out tonight?” Bruce asks. 

Tim closes his eyes. “Yes.”

“Very well.”

For a few moments, Tim listens to the steady click of Bruce’s typing. Then it stops and Bruce straightens and Tim’s stomach dips and swells with the sudden thrill of anticipation. When he’s not in these moments, he doesn’t really think of himself as having a _thing_ for denial. But Bruce has always made things happen to Tim that he wasn’t prepared for. 

“Stand,” Bruce orders. His voice is a low, predatory grumble from the center of his chest. 

Tim scrambles gracelessly and desperately to his feet. 

Bruce turns in his chair and leans back, letting his eyes wander up and down Tim’s skin. His gaze feels like a physical pressure to Tim -- he has to ball his hands into fists against his thighs to keep from reaching out and putting Bruce’s hands on him. Bruce has the habit of seeing Tim in ways that have always made him feel naked to his center. 

It’s an odd, gratifying, terrifying sensation to know you are the thing that makes someone like Bruce lose his control. 

When Bruce’s hands do finally touch him, it’s lighter and gentler than Tim’s skin wants. His palms press against the rise of his hipbones and skim along the ridge to the small of his back. He gently eases Tim’s pelvis forward, then dips in and kisses the very sparse trail of dark hair that starts beneath his navel. Bruce’s mouth is hard and warm and dry. Tim makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. 

“You know what you have to do,” Bruce tells him, looking up through the long sweep of his lashes. “Boy. To get what you want.”

Tim nods. 

“ _Say it_.”

“Yes,” Tim says. His voice shakes. “I know.”

There’s a small moment of vertigo that comes from Bruce standing, and how he goes from chest height to nearly a foot above Tim’s head. Bruce like this doesn’t have exactly the same looming, inherently threatening presence that Batman has, but nor is it the tamped down insouciance of Bruce Wayne. It’s something powerful and physically overwhelming that only Tim gets. It makes him feel small and overcome, and he welcomes it. 

And then Bruce’s hands are on him, moving him bodily with such utter ease. Tim is stronger than he looks, but he’s had to fight hard for every inch of physical ability he has. Bruce’s power is precisely honed, but it comes so easily to him. He turns Tim and half-pushes/half-carries him the eight feet to the nearest metal work table. Bruce clears it with a violent swipe of his arm and throw Tim down.

The impact jars his bones and makes him keen. The acoustics of the cave make the sound echo and grow as Tim braces his hands on the cold, unforgiving table’s edge and arches his back. Bruce’s hand plants on his shoulder and shoves him down. It’s shockingly cold against his chest and cheek and Tim rises up onto his toes. “Be _still_ ,” Bruce snarls. His voice sinks claws low into Tim’s belly and makes him ache with need. 

Bruce holds him down and Tim can only hear him shove his clothing off and kick it away. He spreads his legs as far as he can. The weight of his hardening cock is distracting and maddening. “Please,” Tim gasps. “Please, _please_.”

“I said be still,” Bruce growls. He shifts his hand to the back of Tim’s neck. The pose is very much like the hold he uses on criminals when he needs answers and needs them quickly. Tim shudders, fingers spasming against the edge of the table. Bruce knows his quirks so stupidly well. 

“Yes,” Tim murmurs. His voice is low and shivering in his own ears, strung out and needy. 

With his other hand, Bruce drags blunt nail down the column of Tim’s spine. He doesn’t break the skin, but Tim has no doubt he’ll find precise rows of welts when this is done -- but he’s not thinking about that. It’s too easy for him to lose the now, and he refuses to let that happen. So he arches into the low, stinging pain and curls his toes against the rough floor of the cave. 

Bruce’s breath is a rough, tightly controlled sound. He drags his nails down again and Tim cries out a little. He can feel himself sinking down to that dark, bottomless place where Bruce is the only thing that anchors him to earth. The relief is -- overwhelming. 

“Close your legs,” Bruce orders, smacking his hip. 

Tim whines a wordless question and tries to twist around and look at Bruce’s face, but the weight of Bruce’s hand is unforgiving. He can’t move and Bruce’s fingers dig into his skin at the resistance. Bruce smacks him again. “You know,” he says. “You know what you have to do. Close your goddamn legs, boy.”

It isn’t just Bruce who sometimes has a certain amount of difficulty approaching his wants. 

Tim feels like his musculature has been replaced with too tightly wound springs as he moves. His want fights him, protesting that this is the opposite of what he needs and Tim doesn’t disagree. But he also knows the rules -- their rules -- and there is a rhythm to what he and Bruce do that is familiar, and still never stops _working_. 

With his thighs pressed together, his cock is caught between them and the desk. It’s uncomfortable and he wants to move as Bruce’s hand claws over his hip and his ass. The slap is entirely expected and still makes Tim’s hips jerk forward against the hard edge of the table. He grunts in pain and need, and Bruce’s thumb presses into the tight knot of muscle at the base of his neck. 

“Be good,” Bruce grumbles. 

Tim hears the plastic sound of a bottle opening and he flexes back at that. The response is entirely Pavolvian and he can’t do a damn thing to stop it. His cock is hard and the edges of that endless rush of falling and flying place that Bruce can take him to are lapping at the edges of his awareness. 

Bruce drags slick fingers along the cleft of his ass. Tim whimpers at the blunt press of fingers against his entrance. “Greedy,” Bruce says, more to himself than to Tim. It’s a word almost sighed and there’s no reproach in it. Begging sits on the tip of Tim’s tongue, but he can’t give it voice, not yet. He knows what he is, and he needs so badly. 

He pushes his fingers between Tim’s thighs until he touches Tim’s sac. “Please,” Tim cries. “Please. Please.”

Bruce’s fingers dig in hard at his neck. “You know what you have to say, and that isn’t it.” 

And then it’s his cock against the cleft of Tim’s ass, thick and hot and slick. Tim struggles so hard the table rattles and Bruce shifts to press more of his weight against Tim to hold him still. The reminder of Bruce’s size and strength and the utterly helpless feeling of being trapped triggers something nearly calm in Tim’s hindbrain. He can struggle and he’ll be held still. He can fight and he won’t be released. 

He can’t explain why that’s a comfort to him. But it is. 

Bruce’s cock pushes against his thighs, so maddeningly close to where Tim wants him to be. Bruce makes a truncated gasp at that and his free hand wraps around Tim’s hip. The slide is slow and strange to Tim. He wants to open his legs and be shameless and beg. His hands are white knuckled around the edge of the table and he knows what happens next. He knows. 

And even though it’s fairly far from the overwhelming sensation that Tim knows it coming, the feel of Bruce’s cock against his sac still sends his thoughts flying scattershot. He hears Dick wry calling it ‘sex for the no homo’ set with a crooked smile and Steph snorting and waving her hand dismissively at that. Bruce’s sac slaps against the back of Tim’s legs and he can smell Bruce’s sweat and soap. 

He can be good. Tim can be so good. 

And then Bruce’s back is pressed against his and Bruce’s hand is skimming off his hip and wrapping around his cock. Tim’s vision goes white around the edges at the first hard, unforgiving squeeze. “Oh god,” he says, but it echoes like a scream. “Oh god, please.”

Bruce’s teeth sink into his shoulder and Tim screams again. “Please, please, _daddy, please_.”

And then it’s said. 

The funny thing is, for Tim it’s a release, like letting go of a breath that’s been held too long. It’s Bruce who shudders against Tim’s back like the things that hold him together have suddenly begun to disintegrate. His hands tighten so hard Tim knows he’s going to have bruises -- ones that he’ll press on when he’s alone and let the ache wind through his middle as a reminder and an anchor -- and the rhythm of his hips stutters and loses coherence. 

“Daddy,” Tim gasps again. “Please.”

For a moment Tim feels Bruce breathe. And then, “Good boy.”

Then it’s letting go. Bruce pushes up and Tim spreads his legs, grunting with relief as his cock is released. He hears Bruce open the bottle again, then there’s pressure against his entrance, and then two long, big fingers pushing inside him. Tim screams and arches and shoves back. The intrusion is a low burn, welcome and needed. Bruce is murmuring soothing nonsense that doesn’t match the unforgiving push of his fingers. Tim babbles. 

The beauty of Bruce, among many things, is that he knows Tim’s body better than Tim does. It’s two fingers, then three. Tim’s world cycles down to that sensation and Bruce’s hand on his neck, and the swooping endless joy enveloping his perception. Bruce tells him that he’s so fucking good, and that he’s wanted and needed. That he’s beautiful as Bruce leaves bruises on his neck and hips and forces him open. 

Before Tim can try and gather himself together enough to give voice to his need, Bruce’s fingers are gone. 

Tim registers the loss and keens, but Bruce says, “I have you, boy.” His cock traces the same path down the cleft of Tim’s ass.

The slick press of the head against Tim’s entrance makes Tim scream again and shove back, despite knowing he doesn’t have the range of motion or the leverage to force anything. Bruce pushes him down hard again against the table, which isn’t cold any more. It’s warm and slick with sweat. “Easy,” Bruce says. “Easy. I’ve got you.”

His first thrust is so exquisitely controlled it pulls out a sob from the center of Tim’s chest, needy and wailed and utterly relieved. Bruce’s cock is big in Tim’s hands and in his mouth and irrational, impossible in his ass. All Tim can do, and all he has to do, is let himself be open and pliant and good. He can and does wail at the overwhelming sense of release at finally, finally getting what he wants, when Bruce is buried in him as deeply as he can go. 

“Oh, God boy,” Bruce exhales. “Mine. My good boy.”

Tim sobs his agreement. Yes, he can be that.

And after that, Tim’s world cycles down to the hard rhythm Bruce picks up. It’s slick skin, sweat and lube and Bruce’s hands on him. Bruce’s sac slapping against his ass. The arousal that sits as a spiralling coil low in his belly and winds and winds and winds until Tim thinks he’s going to snap apart for the force of it. 

At some point, one of Tim’s knees comes up onto the table and Bruce presses back along his back. His weight traps Tim between two immovable things and Tim can let go entirely. He’s held and safe. He rolls his hips in time with Bruce’s thrusts and screams when Bruce drags against that spot deep inside him that makes his vision short out into bursts of white behind his eyelids. 

In his ear, Bruce says that he is perfect, and that Bruce loves him. 

Tim feels Bruce’s thrusts get shorter and harder the closer he gets. Tim babbles out his need for this. “Please, daddy, yes,” in syllables truncated or drawn out or bitten off with keens of need. Bruce curls in on himself and groans low in the back of throat, like his heart is being torn out at the root. He comes buried deep inside him, messy and holding Tim so hard his bones creak. 

After that, Tim is barely conscious of Bruce’s hand on his cock. The fall over the edge is so seamless with the ways he’s already flying that coming is a continuation of a drawn out release. It washes over him like his spine finally being able to unfurl from the tension that had twisted it up. Bruce’s hand moves off his neck and Tim can throw his head back against Bruce’s shoulder and scream through it. 

For a moment, they rest there together. Tim doubts he could move, and he doesn’t really want to.

“You’re so good,” Bruce tells him. 

“Thank you, daddy,” Tim says.

*

Tim comes back to himself in the shower -- the upstairs shower attached to Bruce’s room -- as Bruce half-holds him up beneath the hot spray with one arm and uses the other to rub shampoo into his hair. It’s such a better return to earth that the first few times, when they collided with violent need and then shoved back away as hard as they could. It’s not a crash, and Tim smiles a little with his eyes closed.

“Are you in there?” Bruce asks mildly. 

“Mm,” Tim hums. “Almost.”

“Can you stand?” 

Tim plants his feet more firmly on the tile and straightens, then cracks open his eyes and turns to look at Bruce over his shoulder. “If I must,” he says in soft mock regret. Bruce rolls his eyes a little, but leans down and kisses him soundly. 

They can’t possibly have much time before everyone returns, but that feels like far less of a loss than it used to. Bruce splays his fingers over Tim’s stomach and gently pushes him back so Tim is leaning against him as the water falls over Tim’s chest and shoulders. The height difference means Bruce is going to be very clean from the bottom of his ribs down, but Tim doesn’t particularly care. 

He’s come to terms with his mild selfishness at being taken care of. 

They lapse into silence, but it’s easy and comfortable. Bruce rises Tim’s hair clean with the little detachable handle, then cuts the water and maneuvers them out of the shower. Tim is perfectly able to move, but he’s content to allow Bruce to move him, to towel him off and leave random, almost shyly soft kisses as he does. Bruce is far more comfortable with force than gentleness. Though Tim thinks that this, the care that always reminds Tim of healing, Bruce likes nearly as much as the rest.

There are clean clothes for them of them sitting neatly on the end of Bruce’s bed. Bruce goes to dress immediately, but Tim pauses to look at himself in the mirror first. 

He has long lines of bruises on both his hips, and diffuse ones over his ass. He has to turn to see the claw marks along his back and the marks on his neck, but he feels a slightly embarrassed sense of pride at seeing confirmation of his ability to know what sexual acts will leave a physical reminder. He has no doubt more will appear at the scattered sore spots he feels tugging at him as he moves. 

Bruce comes up behind him in boxers, and trails a light finger over his neck. “Are you planning on patrolling tonight?” he asks wryly. 

Tim raises an eyebrow. “I’m just slightly concerned about giving criminals the wrong impression should, ah, certain physical reactions happen when they push against any of these.” 

Bruce snorts and slaps him lightly on the hip. “The mission comes first, boy,” he says. And then, after a pause. “Though, I suppose if you’re not feeling a hundred percent, Robin and I could always use the back up.”

The ways in which that is nearly inappropriate makes Tim have to swallow down a laugh. “If you need me,” he says. 

Bruce’s arms come up around his middle. “I always do,” he says, so soft Tim can barely hear it.


End file.
